Engage

  A food tour is a great way to get to know a place, its people and their way of life – especially what foods they enjoy. In this post we’ll not only look at what is a food tour but also the who, what, when, where and why of our company. The Who We’re Alberta Food Tours and we’ve been in business since 2006. Our president, Karen Anderson, is an award-winning cookbook author and co-author of Food Artisans of Alberta- Your Trail Guide to the Best of Our Locally Crafted Fare. We have over 20 members on our team and operate in four cities in our province. We have 90 plus partners and together we support about 150 farms. When you support us, we pay all our partners and team members and we all create a great food culture….

Helping plan private and corporate events has created wonderful connections in our community. DIRTT is a great example from Caglary’s corporate community. The client relations team at DIRTT calls on Alberta Food Tours to provide an experience of Calgary’s culture to the many returning and prospective clients they host each year. We are flexible in creating the product they desire and at times they need it. Their guests are happy, after their very intense time at the DIRTT training facility, to have a break to experience our local culture and vibrant city with our team. We, in turn, love that we get to learn about DIRTT’s state of the art environmental design manufacturing. We also show our appreciation of their business by contributing to the fundraising efforts they undertake for Calgary charities, with gift certificate donations. Today, we got a…

 For sure, we are a small business but if you check out the page devoted to our tourism partners, you’ll see that our reach and ability to support many other small businesses in Alberta’s tourism industry is exponential. We exist to build value for soil, food and people and with every tour ticket you buy, you are helping us build Alberta’s food culture and a healthy tourism economy filled with great jobs and food for our visitors and locals to enjoy. We love this video from Travel Alberta which features some of our great partners including the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and Eau Claire Distillery. Watch it and enjoy a little glimpse behind the scenes. Better yet, come on out and experience it for yourself.

  by Matilde Sanchez-Turri Jodi Willoughby (left) and Carolyne McIntyre-Jackson (right) are sisters and co-founders of Crave Cupcakes. They’re one of our guests’ favourite stops on our Craving Kensington in Calgary and we are proud to have them as a food tour partner. Raised on a ranch near High River and trained by a long line…

 Spending time with Jason Carter and Bridget Ryan is a breath of fresh air. Carter is a painter, sculptor and graphic artist. He practices his art seven days a week. Ryan is a singer, writer, actor, producer and TV host. Together they are respectful, fun and energizing. I met them at a tourism conference and fell in love with their passion and willingness to experiment and collaborate. In Carter’s artist statement he says, “In the world we live in, there is much to be cynical about, but I have found an outlet that I, myself, gather much joy and light, and am so fortunate to be able to pass that joy on.” He also says, “I am aware that much of my craft comes from an innate ability that I have been born with, and believe this to be a…

Canada was rated the number one place in the world to visit in 2017 but what does that really mean in terms of how many visitors will actually show up each year? Destination Canada, our country’s tourism marketing board, has shown that on the path to purchase: 80 per cent of the world has Canada on their dream list 39 per cent are seriously considering coming 11 per cent are starting to gather information 7 per cent have a detailed itinerary 2 percent are finalizing the arrangements and 1 per cent have booked a trip to Alberta. As a small business owner in the tourism sector, I ask myself what can our company do to increase the likelihood that more visitors will not only choose Canada but make Alberta their first choice. After more than a decade in business, I’ve…

  Calgary Food Tours was been named a finalist for Best Culinary Experience at the 2016 Canadian Tourism Awards. “The awards are presented annually by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada to recognize success, leadership and innovation in Canada’s tourism industry, and to reward those people, places, organizations and events that have gone above and…

Each year in November, we show Calgary some love with the #loveyyc campaign. Tourism Calgary and Calgary Economic Development have partnered to, “celebrate our city, people and all the countless things that make Calgary one of the greatest cities in the world”. It’s a call for citizens to advocate for our community and to engage and to support local businesses. Boom, bust or flood, Calgary is strong and here’s another chance to prove it. Get involved by: 1 – being inspired by the video above 2 – using and following the hashtag #loveyyc 3 – choosing activities to attend and businesses to support on #loveyyc day each year from the list at Visit Calgary It’s just that easy. We are proud that our small business supports over 50 local businesses with walking and tasting tours in six Calgary neighbourhoods. Now…

Here’s an article – 10 stops for body-mind-wellness – that journalist Catherine Roscoe Barr of The Life Delicious  published in BCLiving about strategies to employ in the pursuit of health and fitness in Calgary. She was kind enough to mention our Sunday Brunch and Calgary Farmers’ Market Food Tour as one of the strategies. Catherine genuinely loved…

We’ve had a busy spring setting up Alberta Food Tours Inc. in a new destination – Banff – and we’re pleased to tell you that we’re wide open for business in Calgary, Canmore, Edmonton AND Banff now. Canmore Food Tours starts up in early May each year through to October. The tours are Saturdays and Sundays…